URIteacherknowledge - Lesson 3 Jon

Rhode Island Department of Education
Lesson Plan

Lesson Title: Slinkys for Science!!

Context of Lesson:

This lesson gives the students an opportunity to use the model they created testing the questions that we decided to test for. Before the experiment, we'll recap what we covered in the previous class and what we'll be doing today, clarifying any misconceptions students may have. Each group will also describe their plan for the experiment to the class allowing myself and other students to add valuable input ensuring each group conducts an experiment that would provide accurate results to measure the question being tested. After all groups have conducted the experiment as a class we'll discuss each groups results and recognize any trends in data, showing that secondary earthquake waves cause more damage to a house on the surface and move faster when compared to primary waves. Lastly, students will be asked to write a lab report on this experiment including their hypothesis, procedure, data, and conclusion.

Opportunities to Learn:

Depth of Knowledge

Webbs Depths of Knowledge

Level 4: Extended Thinking

Students will have the opportunity to achieve this level by having the opportunity to conduct an investigation, from specifying a problem to designing and carrying out an experiment, to analyzing its data and forming conclusions. In the previous lesson students decided on a problem to be tested and designed an experiment that would accurately provide answers. In this lesson, students will actually carry out the experiment, analyze its data and form conclusion based on it.

Prerequisite Knowledge

For this experiment, students will have to know that slinkys can be used to accurately model the motion of earthquake waves. They determined this in the last experiment, and also came up with a question to be tested and formulated an experiment that they could use to answer this question. Students will also need to know how to use the tools provided to them to accurately conduct the experiment, but any misconceptions on this should have been clarified in the previous class.

Environmental factors

Throughout the class students will mainly be working in groups. These students work in groups on a daily basis, as Mrs. Brocato has incorporated a lot of activities and labs into her daily lesson planning. Although they work well together and I don't foresee any discipline problems, students are working in groups so getting off-task is always a possibility. To minimize this I'll walk around the room frequently checking in with groups to help make connections and to help students through any misconceptions they may have. Another problem students may have is that they'll be working with slinkys, which may cause disruptions along with causing safety issues. A slinky-safety demonstration should clarify the proper way to use the slinkys, and ensuring students that misuse of these will not be tolerated and have immediate consequences should minimize misuse of the materials.

Materials

Slinky
- 6 slinkys
- 12 pieces of string 3 inches long (attach to each end of slinkys prior to class)
- 6 stopwatches
- 6 rolls of masking tape

Objectives:

Students will be able to collect and analyze data to draw conclusions
Students will be able to use scientific process to determine which earthquake wave moves the fastest
Students will be able to use scientific process to determine which earthquake wave would cause the most damage to a building on the surface

Instruction:

Opening:

Question of the Day
- "How are the motions between primary and secondary earthquake waves different? Sketch the motion of the waves to support your answer."
- Go over answer with students and support it with sketches on the smartboard to clear up any misconceptions
Pre-Lab
- Recap with students what we did yesterday. Ask students questions to refer back to what we did such as "Did we prove if a slinky can be used as an accurate model of primary and secondary waves? How?"
- Review the questions we can test using these materials, and which variables we will test to answer these questions.
- Explain that today we will be conducting the experiments that we came up with yesterday, using the models each group came up with to test their question. Each experiment should contain 5 trials for both primary and secondary waves.
- Ask a few students to share what they hypothesized their results to show. Middle school students love to share information about themselves and what they think, so this will give students an opportunity to share and the entire class a chance to hear what a variety of students think will happen.
- Briefly go over Slinky-Safety before conducting the experiment. We have already gone over the proper way to use the slinkys and what is considered unacceptable during the experiment. Assure the students that failure to oblige by these rules will result in points off of their lab report and spending the rest of the period completing an assignment at their desks.
  - Assignment students will be asked to do is read and take notes on the next section on recording earthquakes. Students do not want to sit in their desk reading and taking notes quietly while other students are moving around and using slinkys, so I believe this will be a valid consequence for their action.
- Lastly, remind students that they will be writing a lab report for this experiment which should include a purpose, procedure, data, and conclusion section.

Engagement:

Lab
- Students can now begin their experiment. The students have already developed their model to test for their questions and identified the variables being tested. They should have all the tools necessary to complete the experiment, but during it I will walk around the room checking in with each group asking what results they've got so far and ask them why they think the results showed this. I'll also ask students how their experiment applies to a real earthquake and what their results so far have said about this. (these last 2 questions will be asked towards the end of the experiment when students have more of an opportunity to see a trend.)

Closure:

Post-Lab
- When students are finished with their experiments, we'll meet again as a class to discuss our results. I'll give each group an opportunity to share their results and we'll put the answer that their results showed to their original question. The groups that conducted experiments to answer the same question should show similar results, showing that secondary waves cause more damage to the surface and that primary waves move faster than secondary waves.
  - We'll also discuss how this applies to real life. With the motion secondary waves makes on the surface, what could a city do to minimize the damage done by earthquakes? If primary waves move faster than secondary waves, is there a way we could warn people to seek proper shelter before the secondary waves arrive? Would there be enough time? This gets students thinking of how to design an earthquake-resistant building which will be discussed in the next class.
- Students may have different results, and whether or not they do we can discuss some reasons for experimental error in the experiment.
- Again, remind students they will be writing a lab report on this experiment. For homework tonight they will write a conclusion for their experiment explaining what their results showed and any sources that could have contributed to error.

Assessment:

Students will first hand in their conclusion for the experiment in the next class. I will go over each of these and make corrections/suggestions so students can perfect it before they put it into their lab report. The students will be given 5 days to complete the typed lab report, but most of the components have already been completed for homework such as their hypothesis/procedure (briefly) and their conclusion. Both will be handed back with corrections/suggestions so students shouldn't have to make many changes if they did it correctly. The lab will be counted in the "Lab" percentage of their grade which the average lab grade will be worth 30% of their grade, so students should put some effort into this.

Lesson 3 Jon